There is an ongoing need for the selective and efficient removal of undesirable volatile chemical species from aqueous environments. With the increasing concern for the environment, this need has become pressing. Such selective chemical species removal has also found increasing application in the health care, food and beverage industries. The present invention is concerned with a novel device to accomplish such removal.
Ammonia has been stripped from aqueous streams by conventional packed towers, but has been criticized for releasing ammonia to the atmosphere and often results in fouling of the packing materials. Polar organic solvents were reported to be removed from aqueous solutions by hydrophobic adsorbents of ion exchange particles in a 1987 University of California, Berkeley, Dissertation Thesis by William G. Rixley entitled "Non-Wetting Adsorbents for the Recovery of Solutes from Dilute Aqueous Solutions."